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June 14, 2018

US approves sale of Stinger missiles to India: Lightweight fire-and-forget weapon system a combat-proven technology

The US state department has approved the direct sale of powerful stinger
missiles to India, along with six AH-64E Apache attack helicopters and
Hellfire missiles. Pentagon's defence security cooperation agency
notified US Congress about the state department's decision. The sale is
expected to pass through if no lawmaker opposes the notification, PTI
reported on Wednesday.

However, the sale of Stinger Block I-92H
missiles, if it takes place, will bolster Indian Army's short-range air
defense network massively. The weapon prototype is widely popular among
most US allies and NATO nations due to its compact size, mobility and
multi-purpose usability as a air-to-air and surface-to-air strike
weapon.

What is a Stinger missile?

Stinger missile is a
Man-Portable Air-Defense System (MANPADS), a shoulder-mounted weapon
that can be used to shoot down helicopters UAVs, cruise missiles, and
fixed-wing aircraft, both from land and sea. Besides this, it can be
easily adapted to include air-to-air strike capacity that can be
integrated into most rotary and fixed-wing aircraft, a report in the
Economic Times said.

What increases its popularity is its
portability; the light to carry and easy to operate Stinger missiles can
be shoulder-fired by a single operator. In addition to this, the
missile is quite accurate as it uses an infrared seeker to detect the
heat being emitted from an aircraft engine's exhaust, and can hit nearly
anything flying below 11,000 feet. According to The Diplomat, one
variant of the missile also features an ultraviolet seeker that can
distinguish between flares and jet engines.

According to Raytheon
Missile Systems Company, which is the principal manufacturer of the
missiles in the US, the weapon is deployed in more than 18 nations and
with all four US military services. "Stinger is an immediate-response
weapon of choice against a wide range of air threats, protecting both
fixed sites and manoeuvre forces,” said Jack Elliot, Raytheon's Stinger
programme director.

The combination of supersonic speed, agility
and a highly accurate guidance and control system gives Stinger the
operational edge against cruise missiles and all classes of aircraft.
It's a lightweight, self-contained air defense system that can be
rapidly deployed by ground troops and on military platforms. The missile
is also used on Apache helicopters for air-to-air engagements, a
company press release said.

In fact, Raytheon has entered an
agreement with home-grown Tata Advanced Systems Ltd (TASL) to
manufacture the missile's components in India, the Economic Times report
quoted earlier said.

Stinger, a combat-proven technology ::

The
Stinger missile weapon system has been used in combat in a number of
major conflicts including the Afghan-Soviet War, the Angolan Civil War,
the Yugoslav Wars, the Chechen War and the Falkland War, according to
The Diplomat. Raytheon claims that it has shot down more than 270 fixed
and rotary wing aircraft. It is also used by the US forces deployed in
Afghanistan. Other nations purchasing and using the missile system
include, South Korea, Taiwan, Latvia etc.

According to the
US-based National Defence Magazine, the stringers had given a
particularly tough time to Soviet aircraft in Afghanistan in the 1980s,
where it had downed at least 250 aircraft and choppers. It is widely
believed to be the major reason that forced the Soviets to withdraw its
combat troops from Afghan soil in 1989. According to an article in The
Diplomat, Congressman Charlie Wilson told The Washington Post in 1989,
"Once the Stinger made their helicopters useless, that put the Russians
on foot against the Mujahedin and there’s no one on Earth who can fight
the Mujahedin on Foot." Even though, the claim could be termed debatable
by several other experts, the Stringer's accuracy and speed remains
widely undisputed. Because, notwithstanding the poor training of the
Afghan Mujahideen fighters, most of the launches were reportedly
successful. Besides this, Raytheon claims it maintains an over 90
percent success rate in reliability and training tests against advanced
threat targets.